Today, we're shipping the new "Activity Page" of the Profile here on Meta SE, so you can test it out and hopefully share some feedback and suggestions before we ship it network wide. Hate words? Assuming you're signed in, just click your face up in the top bar, and you can see it right now. Or, keep reading...

Quick Background

You may recall that we're breaking the current "profile" page into two views, to address two use cases:

The "Profile Page" - When you click someone else's user card, by default, you'll see a view designed to give a better overall summary of who they are: Their location, their "About me," what tech/tags they're most active in, their top posts, etc. This page has been live on MSE for a while, and you've given us a ton of great feedback, most of which is already live.

The "Activity Page" - When you click on your own user card, you should see a page emphasizing your actual activity - what you've done, how big an impact you've had helping others, and what you can go do next, if you're so inclined.

Note that both pages will still be visible to everyone (although some fields aren't, for obvious reasons). So, you can look at other users' "Activity" page, and your own "Profile", that's just not the tab that'll be displayed by default.

The Old Activity Page

Let's think about when you're looking at your own page, and start with what the old page (still live on the rest of the network) was good at. Here's the bottom of the page:

It's efficient, and evolved over time, based on what power users told us they needed.

So, let's change it for change's sake! New Things are SHINY, and lead to a brighter - if poorly thought out and short lived - future! Huh. That's actually a pretty awful idea. So, let's leave the content, and pretty much everything else down there exactly how it was, and not mess up anyone's workflow. With the exception of some minor styling tweaks, the actual activity section you interact with today - both the content and the layout - is unchanged.

Now, lets take a look at the top of the page. Remember that the top part doesn't change when you drill down to different activity tabs; it's always there. Again, think of the case where you're looking at your own profile:

So, personally, I'm not that frequently going to my profile to, say... double check what my name is. Or confirm what city I live in. Or see if my age has changed. (Actually, the last one may feel like a waste most days, but ~0.3% of the time, it reminds me it's my birthday - YAY!)

Now, the point isn't that this was dumb design; it wasn't. When the page had to serve both use cases, this info made sense, but when you're looking at your own profile, there's no reason to always be showing you a bunch of things that A) you know and can't realistically forget, B) almost never change, and C) only do get changed by you.

So, we've replaced them, with a new section designed to better summarize your overall activity and contributions. And we've tossed some totally new features in, too.

The New Activity Page (aka "Top Boxes")

The basic goals were:

Don't mess up the bottom part that's working, or make the top part any bigger

Do more to help users track their contributions beyond rep and badge counts (more prominent stats on edits, flags, votes, and the new "People Reached" stat.

Show users at all levels "what they can do next" and help more new ones learn the ropes gradually

Address power-users needs better

I'm not going to walk through all the changes. I'd rather let you go touch it and share your thoughts, but here are a couple of features worth highlighting:

"Progress to next badge" bar automatically selects the badge you're closest to earning (or that's most logical to go for next), and tracks your progress toward earning it. It also helps walk new users through a slightly more guided intro, nudging them to read the "About" page, etc. For most badges, it not only explains how to earn 'em, but also links to a (mostly) logical place to go try to do so:

Progress to next privilege better conveys an attainable milestone, so users have a target to work toward that's a little less daunting than "catch Skeet". And it adapts for our most valuable users, too. Once you have earned all the privileges, you should first and foremost take a pause to celebrate how many frigging people you helped. (The "People Reached" stat is a nice rough estimate). Have a drink, maybe. But after that, we want you to be able to track goals, too, so the "next privilege" bar automatically switches to tracking your progress toward your closest tag badge. Plus, you can change it if you want to pick a different one (like this poor soul might want to do):

The broader context:

As of now, both pages are live here on Meta, so you can try out how they work together. We're rolling out a couple of new features on the "Profile" side as well:

Dedicated fields to share your OSS projects or online presence (Dedicated fields for Github, Twitter, etc.) and new fields in the edit page for them. Note that they're totally optional, and leaving them out won't leave weird blank entries.

New "Hide a community" from my profile feature, (found on the "Edit & Settings" tab.) This came from community feedback, and helps users who may not want their SO Profile - which their boss might stumble upon - to prominently feature their top questions from, oh, I dunno...The Workplace, say. (It's not a true privacy setting, as the connection between accounts can be made with some work, like through the API, but it lets you control what sites are or are not featured on your profile page.)

Note: If you can, please post any suggestions or feedback on the changes to the "Edit/Settings" or the "Profile" page (the one others see) as a new post here on MSE. Ideally, we want to keep the answers here on this post focused on the activity side ("Top Boxes"), since that bit's brand new, and we want to see what suggestions there are important to the most people.

We LOVE it. But, as Joel keeps telling me, no one cares what I think.

We want to know what you think. Go touch it. Play with it. Tell us what you like (seriously). More importantly, what tweaks or adjustments should we make before we ship it network wide? Anything missing that you use all the time?

There are some places where we know we want to make some changes, but we wanted to wait for feedback to determine what approach makes the most sense. (For example, we're fairly sure more tooltips are needed, but having them everywhere makes a mess, so we did them for the most obvious places, but waited for your feedback before adding more, to see where they may be needed most.)

As always, thanks in advance for your feedback - it always helps us ship something better than whatever we started with.

This is really minor, but the tooltip for "1,760 votes cast" says it includes accept votes, but I added my up & downvotes together, and it equaled 1,760, so I have a feeling it doesn't include accept votes.
– hichris123Feb 23 '15 at 13:45

11

This isn't that bad.. From all the old designs I thought it would be terrible, but it's not that bad.. Now can I have the old design back please?
– ɥʇǝSFeb 23 '15 at 15:28

11

@ɥʇǝS, we'll accept that as the absolute best compliment we possibly could have received from you. And it's appreciated (for real).
– JaydlesFeb 23 '15 at 15:29

24

@Oded did you see how many words there are in this question??? Did you expect me to read them all? I just wanted clicky and oooo shiny. Is that too much to ask?
– Won'tFeb 23 '15 at 15:35

10

@Won't - I'm with you. If only that was mentioned at the start of the wall of text.
– OdedFeb 23 '15 at 15:36

Tracking progress of every single badge: something that should have been in since version 1. So glad it is added now, and I can't wait until it's network-wide.
– TylerHFeb 23 '15 at 17:16

15

Don't have very interesting numbers on Meta... excited to see what the SO one looks like (and to know what my "next" badge is).
– HoganFeb 23 '15 at 19:41

60

I can't really judge this based on my (tiny level of) meta.SE activity (I really don't care that it thinks my next most achievable badge here is Critic for example). I'd need to look at how it works on my most active SE site(s). I think it might be good, but how could I really tell, unless I can see how it would work on the one I deal with every day? If there was a link on my user pages "check out how the new page would look" ... that would let me give real feedback! I can get some idea from other people's pages, ... but it doesn't really show me the things I am actually most familiar with
– Glen_bFeb 24 '15 at 0:42

21

can we please have it now its so prettyyyyy
– sevenseacatFeb 24 '15 at 8:29

@NoviceSEMetaGeek, it's always dangerous to estimate shipping dates, but managing expectations can't hurt: There is some unrelated back-end design work on other sites that needs to happen first, plus we're cranking through changes based on the suggestions here, so I think we're hoping for something like 4 weeks until we can push it network wide. A little faster than that is possible, and a lot longer is always a risk, but we're hoping to come in a little under a month.
– JaydlesFeb 24 '15 at 19:44

10

That's a remarkably elegant piece of writing: beautifully poised, and doing a great job of expectations-management and change-management. Kudos to the author(s).
– EnergyNumbersFeb 24 '15 at 20:51

147 Answers
147

The default for me was Autobiographer, so I thought the little pencil icon next to it was to edit my profile to get the badge, rather than to choose the next badge to track. status-completed

I can select Illuminator (gold) as the next badge to track even though I haven't even earned Explainer (bronze). The current badge progress bars shown in the review queues only show the next tiered badge. The next-badge selection should only show me the lowest tier I haven't yet earned, rather than just listing all possible badges. status-declined - we don't see a good reason to disallow tracking any badges. You are the one in the driver seat here, after all.

This has nothing to do with the new profile pages. No idea why you though this was a good place to post it.
– OdedMar 6 '15 at 14:40

@Oded I am very sorry, just saw this bug on MSE in the flag history and decided to report there, because ui seems to be new and, after all, it is profile page.
– nicaelMar 6 '15 at 14:41

It is a sub page, linked to from the profile page. It wasn't something we changed at all for this project (the link has more visibility than the old profile page that's all - possibly why you thought it is new). Might have changed with the CSS updates that many sites have been getting, unrelated to the profile page.
– OdedMar 6 '15 at 14:43

status-completed - we changed the size to 48*48, which imgur supports, so the full, original, image will not download, but the cropped one will.

On the Activity tab, when I right-click on my avatar next to my name on the upper right and select "View Image", it loads a huge 1453x1453 version of that image (presumably the exact image that I uploaded for my avatar).

That means the Activity tab is loading the huge image and shrinking it in the upper right. I think it should load an image that has already been shrunk on the server.

I'm pretty sure gravatar.com has already done the image shrinking, and the page loading is being done through that magic.
– hardmathFeb 24 '15 at 16:05

@hardmath When I right-click and do a "View Image" on my avatar in other places, it loads the same size avatar, never the full-size version.
– pacoverflowFeb 24 '15 at 16:07

When I do inspect element on that image, it goes to <img src="https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/3398257417092655df73d9a8912f2832?s=36&amp;d=identicon&amp;r=PG" alt="" width="36" height="36">
– hardmathFeb 24 '15 at 16:08

We have two options for avatars - you can either use gravatar, or you can upload your own (which goes to our private imgur instance). That's why you're seeing two different behaviors...you and @hardmath are using two different services.
– LauraFeb 24 '15 at 16:58

I would really like to decrease the information distance on the other tabs, especially on Answers and Questions it would be useful. Please make the shiny (almost empty) top grey boxes appear only in the summary, so that I actually see my posts when I change the tab (currently, I have to change the tab and scroll, but most often I need to click one of the two or three posts, and the scroll could be therefore avoided).

I disagree pretty strongly – if you hide the top boxes, then the tab navigation moves around. I never want the same set of navigation to move around on the page. (Besides that, they'd move to tabs directly under tabs and would probably look really ugly. :) )
– LauraFeb 24 '15 at 0:20

1

@Laura Why would it float? You simply place it above the grey boxes. Also, the space from the tab title to the red line could be reduced.
– yo'Feb 24 '15 at 0:28

@StéphaneMartin I use Linux; the top screenshot is Firefox 35.0.1, the top one is dwb, which is a fairly obscure webkit based-browser (which I don't really expect you to support, which I also added the Firefox screenshot).
– Martin TournoijFeb 24 '15 at 21:56

I think the intent of this is to bring you to tags on which you have some knowledge.
– MoosemanFeb 23 '15 at 15:36

6

@Mooseman is correct. To be clear, we expect a lot of these "Go Get Its" to get tweaked based on feedback, but in this case, we were aiming at tags you have actively expressed interest or expertise in.
– JaydlesFeb 23 '15 at 15:56

2

@Jaydles There might still be a bug here...I see that there's an anchor tag in that URL, but my page doesn't jump to it. It's kind of confusing to load the page and see a big "preferences" header rather than the tags.
– LauraFeb 24 '15 at 0:13

1

Also, I am kind of surprised to learn we don't have a "mine" tab on the /tags page! We usually tab all the things!
– LauraFeb 24 '15 at 0:14

status-declined - The badges that were chosen for badge progress were selected with a few different constraints in place - one was for badges that we believe going after is a net benefit to the site. Another one was impact on performance / feasibility of progress tracking implementation. As result, some badges are not trackable at this time.

The point of the progress bars is to encourage you to go take whatever action gets the badge. For the "consolation badges", it's not clear what action to take. Do you set out to write acceptable-but-not-upvote-worthy answers? (I still support showing progress, but the call to action is just weird.)
– Jeffrey BosboomFeb 26 '15 at 1:51

Also (favorite|stellar|nice|good|great|popular|notable|famous) question, enlightened, generalist, guru, (nice|good|great) answer, populist, reversal, commentator, pundit, … and others. There are many badges that are not available as goals. I would especially love to see the generalist. But I assume these depend too much on the behavior of others. And generalist can even lose progress as the overall interests of the community shift and top tags change.
– PalecFeb 27 '15 at 20:22

@Palec Yes, that would be great, but note that all the current trackable badges can only be earned once and not per-post. What post should be tracked with per-post badges? And commentator, pundit and generalist are great to be tracked. Do you allow me to add them to my request?
– nicaelFeb 27 '15 at 20:25

The badges that were chosen for badge progress were selected with a few different constraints in place - one was for badges that we believe going after is a net benefit to the site. Another one was impact on performance / feasibility of progress tracking implementation. As result, some badges are not trackable at this time.
– OdedMar 3 '15 at 20:45

@JeffreyBosboom: If the sole purpose was encouragement, I don't see the point of listing the Disciplined badge. It's odd to provide an incentive to delete a post with a score of 3 or more.
– WernerJun 23 '16 at 19:19

status-bydesign - it is difficult to find a good place for this stat on the activity page, given the new design.

I miss the last seen item on the Activity page when pursuing the Fanatic badge, even when Fanatic badge is selected. Now it is on the Profile page only. I’d like to be able to tell if I have to do an action today, or if I have already done. I have some of my Stack Exchange profile pages in pinned tabs in my Firefox and the last seen field used to remind me to show some activity.

status-declined - if we do display hidden communities, this would be confusing (hey, why is it there - I just hid it!), as well as be inconsistent. The profile page should look the same to you as it does to others. The hidden communities are one click away.

If I hide my communities, can they not be hidden for me? It can be just applied the same background which is applied to deleted answers.

Also, an ability to (un)hide directly from the accounts section is great.

status-declined - the design doesn't lend itself for another statistic, we also have a lot of different review queues. So, just showing a number here is not meaningful.

In that impact box (listing edits, helpful flags and votes), could we also include 'reviews completed'? I think this is an important counting statistic and would let users who keep working the queues even after getting those gold badges show off their dedication. (The top-20-all-time list in each queue a) only shows 20 users and b) isn't shown in the profile.)

These screenshots were taken on IE 11 on Windows 8.1, but I can also reproduce the behavior on Firefox and Safari (OS X). If I switch to private browsing, I also see the lack of a space on my own profile.

@nicael - that looks like the anonymous view (I see that when viewing the profile in incognito), but not when viewing directly. Could be a bad if statement somewhere to do with mod/employee powers (alternatively, a bad if statement to do with anonymous users). Gives me something to chase tomorrow morning.
– OdedMar 3 '15 at 20:49

@KevinBrown - by design. On a site which you have hidden, we pretend you have no network posts or other sites (we show you the other communities, but only to yourself/mods). To fix... unhide the current site ;)
– OdedMar 6 '15 at 15:18

This user got "Suffrage" 16h ago, so it can't be just caching? Anyway, looks pretty weird..

Edit: I understood why this happens. Once a user wins a badge, he can choose another one to track. But until he choose, next badge is his last earned badge. So I propose not to show "Next badge" if a user has already won it but hasn't chosen a new one to track yet.